Microsoft 365 comprises a vast variety of toolsets that promote collaboration, communication, and productivity organization-wide. It has grown multifold from the small set of office tools it was once known for. Although Microsoft 365 is an increasingly powerful platform with a variety of solutions, it is also because of this reason that organizations often find themselves facing some common difficulties. As avid members of the Microsoft community with years of experience under our belt, we would be delighted to help address some of these challenges and how businesses can overcome them.
What to Use When in Microsoft 365
End-users have a plethora of tools and applications at their disposal throughout the Microsoft 365 platform. So much so that the versatility of the platform can be overwhelming for some. Even though Microsoft 365 is an all-encompassing business solution, picking the right tool for a task never gets easy with so many choices. So, how do you decide which tool is right for what purpose?
Business professionals are well aware that there is no one size fits all answer to this problem as every organization and its requirements are unique. Therefore, for assured business success, it is imperative to narrow down on the best-suited tool for your unique problem or project.
There are now third-party applications to help resolve this challenge and simplify the Microsoft 365 experience for your employees, such as Orchestry. Orchestry helps define the right tools for the right purpose for your users in Microsoft 365 from the start, taking any guesswork out of the equation to ensure higher productivity and satisfaction.
Orchestry’s Workspace capabilities take a business-first approach by extracting the behind-the-scenes technology and keep it as simple as possible for your users. You can provide single-point access for users to request Microsoft Teams and SharePoint Sites along with simple customizations through their features. Therefore, users do not have to worry about choosing a particular tool in the first place.
Cumbersome Microsoft 365 Customizations
Microsoft 365 is a commonly used platform by many businesses of all sizes. Even though the same service is available to all of these organizations, they can personalize their experience of the environment through customizations. The customization opportunities are plenty, you can create and use custom SharePoint Online site designs, custom templates for Microsoft Teams, and custom themes with your organization’s logo and colours, among other achievable requests. However, designing, implementing, and managing such customizations is a cumbersome affair and not to say, exorbitant.
Uncomplicate the hassle of customizing Microsoft 365 with Orchestry’s Workspace Templates cost-effectively. With Workspace Templates businesses can create custom complex solutions but present them to their users in a simple way, therefore, achieving personalization along with promoting usage and seamless adoption. Not to mention, each template in itself can be customized with features, document templates, and rules.
Balancing Microsoft 365 Governance
Microsoft 365 without adequate governance and policies in place can cause unwieldy sprawl across the platform, only making the user experience exhausting. Additionally, What’s more alarming about poor governance is the security concerns that come with it. In order to get maximum value from your Microsoft 365 platform, setting up proper governance is crucial. It is also just as important to keep updating those policies alongside the Microsoft 365 updates, making governance an ongoing chore.
The governance capabilities with Orchestry help you future-proof your organization’s strategy for Microsoft 365 with features like naming conventions, approval workflows, channel configurations suggestions and metadata. You can even customize the governance rules for each Workspace Template within Orchestry. Orchestry’s governance framework ensures a consistent experience without too many bottlenecks for end-users.
The Paradox of Choice
Given the range of tools and applications that are available with Microsoft 365, it is not a surprise that there is an overlap in the functionality between some of them. This crossover is what causes the typical issue of confusion amongst users, somewhat adding to the ‘what to use when’ problem. Let’s take a look at some similar applications and distinguish between their functions:
To Do vs Planner vs Microsoft Project for Task Management
As one would think, To Do works as a to-do list, for small everyday tasks that are not usually associated with bigger projects. Microsoft Planner can take on some lightweight task management and has the feature of visual display of jobs. Microsoft Project is your big-ticket item, for the heavy lifting of complex projects and it is also more customizable. So depending on the scale of the task at hand, you can pick the right tool.
Teams vs Yammer for Communication
To put it simply, in this context, Microsoft Teams works as a chat tool. Something you would use for instant messaging and communicate in real-time, from any device or location. Whereas, Yammer is similar to Facebook but for business, good for brainstorming and sharing ideas that do not require an instant response. In fact, through the Orchestry Workspaces, you can make Yammer a part of your MS Teams team too!.
SharePoint Online vs OneDrive for Document Management
There is no guessing that SharePoint facilitates the sharing of documents. Many organizations make use of it as an intranet portal that contains business’s internal communications, documents, policies, and data. On the other hand, OneDrive acts like a storage facility for documents that you work on, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t be shared. OneDrive also allows you to sync files on your device or keep them in the cloud, allowing you to access them from anywhere.
Solve All Your Microsoft 365 Challenges
From all that we have discussed, it can be said that organizations can tackle Microsoft 365 challenges with the correct mix of development, change management strategy, and administration, but there is a more straightforward approach to eliminating these issues. We have one word for it – Orchestry.
Orchestry’s purpose is to simplify working within Microsoft 365 and promote business success for both IT administrators and end-users through a user-friendly interface and navigation around Microsoft 365. The platform is designed with best practices in mind to allow organizations to maximise productivity and efficiency with Microsoft 365.